Haiti mission trip was life-changing for local teens

Friday

Mar 10, 2017 at 9:00 AMMar 13, 2017 at 10:25 AM

There they stayed in the dormitories of Haiti180, a 15-year-old non-profit mission founded by American musician Sean Forrest. It includes an orphanage, a home for abandoned elderly, a school, a church and a medical center currently under construction.

Gail Besse Ryberg Hingham Journal

Shoes. Food. Running water. A mattress to sleep on.

These are things that 22 local high school students appreciate more now since their week-long February mission trip to Haiti.

“Village kids would point to their mouths to show us they needed food,” said Dane Caron, a sophomore at Xaverian Brothers High School. He and three others from the Seaside Life Teen group of Hingham’s Resurrection and St. Paul Catholic churches talked of their trip in a recent interview.

They agreed the experience was “life changing.”

“It was transformative - the happiest week of my life,” added the Rev. Sinisa Ubiparipovic, their spiritual advisor. “This was the Gospel right smack in your face.”

Christine Resca, a Fontbonne Academy sophomore, said, “Little kids would ask for my shoes, even though their feet were half the size of mine. Then I realized that I have so many shoes at home.”

Fr. Sinisa said the group was initially light-hearted and giggling on the bus ride from the airport. Then they drove into Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince. “It was complete silence.”

They saw piles of trash and smelled garbage everywhere. Dirt-floor huts perched nearly on top of each other up nearby hills.

“I knew it would not be pretty,” said Christine,” but I didn’t know it would be that bad.”

From Port-au-Prince they traveled 80 miles west, a five-hour trip, to the mountain villages of Duverger and Danndan.

There they stayed in the dormitories of Haiti180, a 15-year-old non-profit mission founded by American musician Sean Forrest. It includes an orphanage, a home for abandoned elderly, a school, a church and a medical center currently under construction.

The teens and five chaperones prayed daily with each other, with those in Haiti180 and with villagers who lived nearby. These villagers were needier than the children and elderly being cared for by Forrest’s mission.

For example, the orphanage children are now healthy, while the hair of other children often turns red, a sign of malnourishment. Some come to Haiti180’s school without having eaten for a day.

With a yearly per capita income of about $800, this island nation is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Life expectancy is 62 years for men, 65 for women.

“The Haitians appreciated the most simple things,” said Catherine Koenen, a junior at Hingham High. “The kids were smiling and having fun even though they had nothing. I think it taught me to try to do everything with love.”

Students worked at painting the medical center for three hours daily then visited the elderly and went on village house visits.

“One family had 14 children living in one room,” Catherine said. “And an older lady we visited had her wooden coffin on a shelf in her hut: just waiting there above her head every day.”

According to the mission website, this practice of having a coffin or gravesite ready developed in the mountains where relatives may live nearby but are too poor to care for “Haiti’s lost and forgotten elderly” even in life, never mind after death.

“But some of the older people seemed so wise,” said Christine. She recalled meeting a 94-year-old man who still worked tending goats. “He told us to remember to love God and our neighbor.”

“It was easier to communicate than we thought it would be,” said Anthony Rochte, a freshman at Hingham High. “The kids just wanted to play, and we could perform silent skits we had practiced for the elderly and workers at the medical center.”

One skit was The Good Samaritan. “We didn’t need words,” Anthony said. “They understood. And the kids loved using our cameras; they loved seeing themselves on them. I thought it would be tough without our cell phones, but it was OK.”

Others welcomed the social media break. “We were busy, and it was just so much fun,” Christine said. Two memorable afternoons were playing dominoes with village women who taught them the game and beat them every time.

“These people have no technology: no phones, no television,” said Fr. Sinisa. “There’s something about attaching ourselves to spiritual rather than material things that brings true happiness.”

“The faith I saw was amazing,” Dane said. “It opened my eyes; now prayer and the Mass mean so much more. I’m happy to go to church now; I appreciate how blessed we are.”

Each youth group member on the trip pledged to support Haiti180 with at least a $15 monthly donation. They had personally and collectively raised the funds for the February trip ($1,000 each plus airfare) and many want to return.

The hardest part was saying good-bye to the kids,” said Dane. “I especially remember a 6-year-old deaf boy who could read lips in Creole. And an 11-year-old epileptic girl, Mishka. She was usually so sad, but to see her smile was wonderful.”

Christine added, “Those kids need to be loved and cared for. I’m not a crier, but I cried when I came home. I want to go back.”

Fr. Sinisa had explained earlier to both St. Paul and Resurrection parishioners that a mission trip differs from a service or relief trip.

“The origin of service trips is primarily external; it’s the reaching out of one community to another for help,” he said. “A mission trip is an internal call; it’s a call that originates in the heart, an invitation from Jesus Christ to be His hands and feet to our brothers and sisters in need. Above all our trip is firmly rooted in prayer.”

Prayer is also the keystone of Haiti180, which aims “to form well educated leaders of faith for the future of Haiti.” Its immediate goal is to raise $220,000 to equip the medical center.

This clinic, the website states, “will allow women to give birth in a safe environment instead of alone in shabby huts.” It will provide basic medical procedures and save people from having to walk many hours seeking help.